Tag: Della Cannings

North Yorkshire Police’s longest serving Command Team officer is Timothy Madgwick. He was promoted to ACPO rank in 2009. Three years later he was leading the force after the departure of disgraced chief constable, Grahame Maxwell [1].

Elevation to the top job completed an astonishing, meteoric rise through the ranks for Madgwick that saw five promotions in ten years, following a spell as staff officer to the then chief constable, David Kenworthy and, later, a chief of staff role with Maxwell shortly after the latter had joined NYP from the troubled South Yorkshire Police. Maxwell had spent the previous twenty three years at two other deeply corrupt police forces: Cleveland and West Yorkshire.

Kenworthy, awarded the Queen’s Police Medal (QPM) in 1996, whilst serving with Avon and Somerset Police, has held a post as one of fifty Deputy Lord Lieutenants in North Yorkshire since 2004. The Lord Lieutenant is, of course, The Queen’s personal representative. Establishment frippery at its most prolific. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to deduce that the regally connected Kenworthy may have had a hand in the nomination for an award of the same gong to his former protegé, and near Easingwold neighbour, last year.

As the same medal is held by the likes of the aforementioned Maxwell – and other shamed chief constables with connections to Yorkshire, such as Sir Norman Bettison, Sir Stephen House, David Crompton, Meredydd Hughes, David Westwood, Mark Gilmore, Sean Price and York-born Nick Gargan, it is not worth the rag to which is attached. There are certain to be other bemedalled chief officers outside of God’s Own County, who have shamed the police service, for those with the time to search.

Mark Gilmore is hoping to salvage his damaged reputation in civil proceedings against his police commissioner, Mark Burns-Williamson, that are currently lodged with the High Court.

At the time Tim Madgwick took over as temporary chief in May 2012, his predecessor and mentor, Maxwell, had told the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), during a gross misconduct investigation [2], that “he could do what he wanted because he was the Chief Constable”. Looking at the number and scale of controversies that had dogged the force over the previous ten years that was obviously the mindset of the force’s leaders and those closest to them. Few being closer, of course, than the high-flying Madgwick.

Six months prior to his elevation to the top job, an investigation had been launched by NYP in which Madgwick had been appointed Gold Commander by Maxwell. This was codenamed by the force ‘Operation Rome‘ and is one that has been dogged by controversy from its early days. Much has been written about the probe already, including on this website [3] and [4], and, for the last twelve months, there has been a running battle between myself and a police force obsessed with covering up the truth.

Rome was an investigation of such mind-numbing mediocrity that the public has every right to see the audit trail of the decision-making, in an operation that the force themselves claim cost over £400,000. The mandatory lessons learned reporting should also be made public, even though in this particular case, on present evidence, there appears to be just one: Don’t trust Tim Madgwick with anything more complex than operating a dashboard-mounted speed camera.

In the near three years that the investigation lasted, it appears there were just three suspects and the alleged criminal activity was harassment without violence. One of the suspects, well known citizen journalist Nigel Ward, was never interviewed and no harassment warnings (PIN’s) were issued. Another citizen journalist, Tim Hicks, was interviewed at Fulford Road police station in York, but harassment scarcely featured in the police questioning. The detectives seemed much more concerned with protecting the reputation of NYP and preventing articles being written about the force. The suspect’s London solicitor, David Niven of Penningtons wrote to NYP’s Head of Legal Services, Simon Dennis, after the police interview in the most scathing terms [5].

Dennis, on whose watch the Maxwell debacle (and a number of others) unfolded and who now works for the Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner, is also roundly criticised elsewhere on this website [6]. Including over the way he has handled complaints about Madgwick.

Following the investigations into alleged harassment by the heavyweight Operation Rome team, two seperate evidence packages were sent to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for charging decisions. Both were rejected by the CPS. Given the relatively low evidential threshold for this type of offence that is noteworthy failure by NYP.

The latest skirmish between myself and the force in the quest for the truth over the Rome debacle was a freedom of information request submitted in August, 2016. Answers were sought to these five questions:

1. Name(s)/rank(s) of Gold Commander of this operation.
2. Name(s)/rank(s) of Senior Investigating Officer(s).
3. Policy log (sometimes described as the policy book)
4. Final investigation report
(it is accepted that items 3. and 4. will be redacted to protect exempted personal information).
5. All documents connected with collection, classification and codifying of financial information that produced the alleged final investigation cost of £409,970.

NYP’s answer to the first question has already been incorporated into this piece, but poses several more queries as a result: Why was an assistant chief constable (as Madgwick was at the time) involved leading an investigation of this type? When he became chief constable, albeit temporarily, why did he continue in the role? In September, 2012 Madgwick gave a witness statement in the investigation alleging how he was a victim of harassing emails and on-line articles and images. At that point why did he not, properly and in accordance with all known approved policing practice, recuse himself from any further involvement in the investigation? The friendship of Madgwick with the police authority chair at the time, Jane Kenyon, another key figure driving the harassment allegations, should also have been sufficient reason for Madgwick to walk away. Miss Kenyon, regularly ridiculed in the satirical magazine Private Eye [6], and Madgwick’s wife Delia also have an association, previously undisclosed, through St Hilda’s School in Whitby, dating back to 1996.

The stunted answer to the second question also poses even more questions: It is now disclosed by NYP that there were not one, but two SIO’s. A detective superintendent and the head of the professional standards department. The force has refused to name them. They claim it is ‘personal information’. From other materials I have obtained in the course of my own investigations into Operation Rome I can say, with a reasonable amount of certainty, that the officers concerned were Detective Superintendent Heather Pearson (better known as a murder investigator) and Steven Read,a former assistant chief constable who, curiously, held the role as Head of PSD as a post-retirement, jobs-for-the-boys civilian. Which begs the obvious question: why were two officers of this seniority, working under the strategic command of a temporary chief constable, investigating harassment without violence allegations?

Pearson was later to be a recipient of an estimated £50,000 of free legal fees, provided by the force (along with Madgwick), in pursuing the same three suspects through the civil courts. Read, for reasons unknown, declined the force’s offer of the same benefit. It was also Pearson who portentiously told Hicks on 27th July, 2012 that she would bring civil action (beyond her police powers as it happens) on behalf of senior officers named in an article about the expenses scandal that was eventually to prove the downfall of Maxwell. Others named in that article included Madgwick, over police expenses allegedly claimed in pursuit of one of his many laudable hobbies and interests, the Special Olympics Group Board. Hicks, apart from his amateur journalism role, is also a chartered accountant, and certified fraud examiner, so is likely to know much more than the man in the street about such things. For their part, ‘open and transparent’ NYP stonewalled every legitimate enquiry made to establish the legitimacy of the claims.

The third and fourth questions produced a blank refusal. Relying, mainly, on the premise that releasing the policy log and investigation report would assist criminals in avoiding detection and give away police operational secrets. The reader is invited to bear in mind (again) this was a harassment without violence investigation in which the complaints centred around emails and articles published on the internet (as were a number of the emails). One of the purposes of the freedom of information request was to obtain an admission that these documents actually exist. Their response does this. However, until such times as they are disclosed – albeit in redacted form – I remain sceptical.

The fifth question received a similarly ludicrous response. NYP claim that they cannot disclose the requested documents, and audit trail of investigation costs, that was, at best, a contrived, back-of-the-envelope job produced with a pre-ordained figure in mind. Claiming that such documents could be protected by legal professional privilege has no basis in fact or law. As with the policy log and investigation report, I remain sceptical as to whether the documents actually exist and put that forward as a realistic hypothesis as to why they cannot be disclosed. Interestingly, the officer who allegedly compiled the figures, Force Solicitor Jane Wintermeyer, also heads up the department that deals with NYP’s FOI requests. She is another with connections to the Easingwold area.

A challenge to the unanswered questions, by way of an internal request, has been submitted to NYP [7] and will, doubtless be followed by a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). My submissions to the ICO will include this quote from Chief Constable Dave Jones and Police Commissioner, Julia Mulligan, in December, 2013 when issuing a statement concerning the efforts to procure repayment of monies allegedly owed to force by Grahame Maxwell and his former deputy, Adam Briggs: “It will be the first time North Yorkshire Police will have published a report of this nature, and is in stark contrast to the old way of doing business and keeping reports like these under lock and key.”

The sharp eyed may have noted in my request for internal review that reference was made to the NYP civil disclosure unit (or much more likely Mrs Wintermeyer) putting FOI requests concerning Operation Rome (and the follow up Operation Hyson) into ‘special measures’ – and asking requesters to provide ID. Some of my other requests/internal reviews on Rome (and/or Hyson) are months overdue, which appears to bear that out.

In the meantime, Tim Madgwick will no doubt be treating his Twitter followers to his view of himself and North Yorkshire Police which range, generally, between ‘amazing‘, ‘great‘ and ‘fantastic‘. For my part, I will plod away, quietly and methodically, determined to get to the bottom of this shambles and expose the culpability of those involved in it, their propensity for deceit, and the true motive behind pursuing this Operation Rome beyond all sense or reason.

The last words for now go to Dave Jones. This is what he said at the time of the award of the QPM to his colleague: ‘Tim has led teams through some of the most serious incidents North Yorkshire Police has dealt with in recent years in an exemplary way‘.

Annotations:

[1] Daily Mail, 17th May 2012: Disgraced chief constable who tried to help relative get a job is given £250,000 golden goodbye

In June 2013, when David Graham Jones took charge of North Yorkshire Police for the first time, he probably thought that he had ‘landed on his feet’ as we say oop t’North. A rambling, old country hall as HQ, miles from anywhere, it truly is far from the madding crowd

lfordPolicing the genteel and largely rural acres of Harrogate, Ripon and York (the latter two the only cities on his patch) would also be a far cry from his previous career postings in the rough, tough gun-toting, knife-wielding districts of Salford and Belfast.

Add to that a charming, equable and unchallenging employer, in the form of Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Julia Mulligan, and a Command Team deeply committed to self congratulation and backslapping, and it all must have seemed very agreeable

Top all that off with a largely tame local and regional media and what could possibly go wrong for the Jones boy?

Much has been written elsewhere about the Jimmy Savile and Peter Jaconelli child abuse scandal in the seaside town of Scarborough. In brief, the investigative efforts of two citizen journalists – Tim Hicks and Nigel Ward – led to a BBC Inside Out programme aired in April 2014. It showed NYP in a poor light and Jones didn’t put either himself, or any of his officers, up for interview.

The bottom line is, that without the sterling efforts of Messrs Hicks and Ward, the many victims of the two, now notorious, child sex offenders would have received no recognition, apology or closure. Their reward by North Yorkshire Police? To be hounded through the civil courts for eighteen months.

A Google search of ‘Operation Rome’ and ‘Operation Hyson’ will link to a number of forensic articles I have written about these two disastrous, and very costly, NYP investigations that now span almost five years. They have brought significant reputational damage to both Jones, and his police force .

Much worse publicity is yet to come as Hyson, a civil harassment claim against the two journalists responsible for the exposure of the Savile and Jaconelli scandal, lurches towards a trial at Leeds County Court on 20th July, 2016. Eighteen months to the day since proceedings were issued. The press benches will, no doubt, be overflowing to report on the unfolding proceedings.

Jones, as lead claimant in that civil case, felt it necessary to award himself free legal fees, courtesy of the public purse, before approving the launch of the claim. At a figure currently estimated at £40,000, come the end of the trial. He also authorised two of his very senior officers, Deputy Chief Constable Timothy Madgwick and C/Supt Lisa Winward (pictured below) to access the same legal fees benefit.

On top of that estimated £120,000 diminution of the public purse by three serving police officers, Jones – in a grand gesture of munificence – also granted free access to the public purse to one of his retired police officers, ex Superintendent Heather Pearson and former Police Authority Chair, Jane Kenyon. That leap of faith then takes the bill up to an estimated £200,000.

But Jones didn’t stop there. In the best traditions of past North Yorkshire Police ACPO officers such as Della Cannings, Grahame Maxwell, Dave Collinsand Adam Briggs, and their liberal approach to the spending of police funds, he awarded the same amount of free legal fees to four members of the public. Taking the total estimated bill to the North Yorkshire precept payer for the private court claim up to around £350,000.

Curiously, Jones is a leading light in the Chief Police Officers Staff Association (CPOSA) who might, reasonably, have been expected to provide support for one of their members pursuing legal action, rather than Jones using police funds as a personal piggy bank. Jones’ Deputy, Tim Madgwick, is also a CPOSA member. A copy of the CPOSA legal expenses policy can be viewed here. Similarly, Lisa Winward and Heather Pearson are covered by legal expenses insurance as members of the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales (PSAEW). Whilst the insurance is more regularly used as an aid to defending claims against officers, Hyson was grounded, allegedly, in health, safety and welfare issues connected to the police officers.

Even more curiously, Mrs Mulligan (supported by Jones) contemplated embarking on legal action to recover monies from Maxwell and Briggs but abandoned the idea, because it might have cost too much in legal fees (and the Maxwell and Briggs personnel files had reportedly and mysteriously ‘disappeared’). In the context of the huge sum of public money spent on Hyson, and what is likely to be achieved, letting the errant chiefs off the hook looks a very poor judgement call indeed, by comparison.

Put shortly, it was “inappropriate” according to Jones and Mrs Mulligan to chase two former NYP Command Team officers for £100,000 they owe (read more here), but no problem at all to spend around £350,000 of public money hunting down two journalists.

Which makes this joint statement of Chief Constable Jones and PCC Mulligan in the wake of the Maxwell, Briggs farrago sound very hollow indeed: “The commissioner and the chief constable are determined that issues of this kind shall never be allowed to occur again”.

But an issue of exactly that kind has occurred, just over a year after that solemn pronouncement was made – and the two people at the very heart of the scandal – and some of the attempts to conceal it from the public, are the very same Dave Jones and Julia Mulligan.

The unauthorised removal (or theft if you like) of the Briggs and Maxwell personnel files also has a troubling ring to it. Are NYP saying to the wider world that sensitive materials stolen from their own police HQ go completely undetected? This has shades of the Sir Norman Bettison scandal, when renewed allegations of platinum wire theft against the former Merseyside and West Yorkshire Police chief constable (pictured below) could not be progressed, as the original criminal and disciplinary files has ‘disappeared’ from South Yorkshire Police HQ by the time outside investigators were appointed.

Returning to Chief Constable Jones, he made one of his rare public, questions from the floor, appearances in October 2013, alongside Julia Mulligan, at St Joseph’s Theatre in Scarborough. He fielded this polite and seemingly innocuous query from Nigel Ward, who was in the audience:

‘Are we all equal under the law, Dave?’

The response was reported as: ‘I bloody well hope so’.

But what Chief Constable Jones didn’t share with Nigel Ward, or the rest of the Scarborough audience that day, is that he runs a police force that recklessly, relentlessly and calculatingly breaks the law almost every single day. I have spent over a year peering into some of the dark corners of North Yorkshire Police and the issues upon which I can now shine light make for bleak reading:

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):

Chief Constable Jones is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as the data controller for North Yorkshire Police. One of the key requirements in that role is to lawfully dispose of information requests within 20 working days. They catastrophically fail to do so, as the image below graphically depicts.

The situation was unacceptable when Jones arrived at NYP, early in the 2013/14 financial year, but it has plainly got WORSE under his leadership. The Information Commissioner’s office has, allegedly, been ‘monitoring’ the situation for the past five years as a York Evening Press article from 2011 discloses (read in full here).

On NYP’s own website they claim that their philosophy is one of an ‘open and transparent’ approach to disposal of FOIA requests. They further claim that they follow the processes and guidelines set out in the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) FOIA manual. A weblink to the manual is helpfully provided by NYP. Except, I have had to write to NYP’s civil disclosure unit and point out that their link is defective. They have been provided with the correct one (click here). However, my email has not drawn a response at the time of publication and the link has not been repaired.

More crucially, I have read the ACPO guidance and I can find very little corrrelation between how North Yorkshire Police deal with information requests (I have made 19 in the last two years) and what the manual directs them to do. So, not only is the law routinely broken, Jones sticks up two fingers to his fellow chief constables.

The dishonesty doesn’t stop there, either. NYP publish a disclosure log on their website but its usefulness is, actually, very limited because it is apparent that some of the FOIA outcomes that damage the police force’s reputation do not make it onto that log. A classic example being the one revealing the numbers of out of time requests over the past three years. So much then for the ‘open and transparent’ philosophy.

Data Protection Act

As with information requests, so it is with data subject access requests. The Act provides for all personal information to be disclosed from the force’s files.

In the case of my own two subject access requests (SAR’s), NYP have broken the law by failing to dispose of one of them appropriately within the stipulated 40 day period. Even after being given the generous option of a simplified form of response (a schedule of documents held, rather than full disclosure of all of them) what was provided was a deeply unsatisfactory shambles that looks as though it has been put together over a disclosure officer’s lunch break. The schedule arrived on the fortieth day, precluding any possibility of the contemplated inspection of the documents within the statutory period.

The other SAR, concerning my data held by Mrs Mulligan’s PCC office, has still not even been acknowledged, let alone determined. It fell due on 31st May, 2015. NYP are responsible, under a joint corporate services arrangement, for dealing with SAR’s and FOIA requests on behalf of the PCC’s office.

Following this latest breach of the law, a further FOIA request has been submitted to NYP requesting details of how many SAR’s the force have dealt with over the past three years, and how many were properly determined to the requester’s satisfaction within the statutory 40 day period. Full details here.

Many may say, and justifiably so, that catching murderers and organised criminals – and keeping the streets clear of drugs, guns and knives is much more important to the public, and its police force, than keeping journalists happy with a stream of information requests. But the principle of operating within the law is exactly the same: Cutting corners with sloppy detective work, outside the recognised investigative framework, will lead to some perpetrators either not being caught (the mistakes by NYP at the outset of the Claudia Lawrence case is a classic and most tragic example), or being acquitted at court if they are arrested and charged.

Police Reform Act (PRA)

Enshrined in the Act at Section 22 is the Independent Police Complaint Commission’s Statututory Guidance. Which is, effectively, a comprehensive manual setting out how complaints against police officers should be handled by the forces by whom they are employed. The person ultimately responsible for ensuring NYP compliance with the law, guidance and police regulations is Chief Constable Jones. In the terms of the Act and Guidance he is known as the ‘Appropriate Authority’. He is, quite rightly, allowed to delegate some of his powers as it would be impossible for a police chief to be embroiled in the day to day minutiae of hundreds of complaints against his officers at any one time.

But here’s the rub: Jones has selected as his delegate an officer who has shown clearly that he is not at all familiar with Statutory Guidance and, even if he was, would not feel at all bound by it. Former Leeds Drug Squad ‘hard man’ DI Steve Fincham‘s view, on all the evidence I have seen, is that the Police Reform Act and Statutory Guidance might apply to other forces when dealing with the public, but not to NYP. Why should it? It’s just another law, amongst many, to flout as and when it suits.

Jones has been subject to thirteen complaints since he took up the post in 2013. Only two were recorded and investigated. The outcomes, in both cases, were that the complaints were not substantiated. NYP did not fully comply with a FOIA request in terms of disclosing the nature of the complaints (read here). Two of the complaints have been made against Jones since the publication of the FOIA outcome. They are both, presently, subject to non-recording appeals to the IPCC.

Civil Procedure Rules

Civil Court Procedure Rules (CPR) are taken very seriously by the courts and, generally, most of the lawyers practising there. So they should. High Court judges, with greater powers than a chief constable, take a very dim view of breaches of the precisely laid out legal framework – and sanction accordingly. But Jones’ North Yorkshire Police appear unconcerned by such issues and appear to regard CPR as merely a rough guide to civil litigation that applies to everyone else but not to them. Why should it? They are above the law.

Accounts and Audit (England) Regulations

The procedure for public inspection of accounts for a larger relevant body, mentioned in Regulation 22, is that it must make the documents mentioned in that regulation available for public inspection for 20 working days. North Yorkshire Police are such a body, but do not feel bound by the Regulations.

Not just unbound, but prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid compliance. In August, 2015 it was agreed, in writing, with NYP’s Chief Financial Officer, Jane Palmer, that certain invoices would be disclosed to me via pdf files carried by email, rather than visit NYP HQ in person (a 140 mile, 3 hour round trip) and pay for them to be photocopied. Almost a year later – and amidst much correspondence and two formal complaints I am still waiting. Those invoices that are being unlawfully withheld unsurprisingly concern Operations Rome and Hyson.

Police Act (Code of Ethics)

In 2014, and pursuant to S39A (5) of the Police Act 1996 (amended by S124 of the Anti Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, 2014), the College of Policing introduced a Code of Ethics.

The public relations narrative from NYP is they they are taking every reasonable step to embed the Code Of Ethics into all operations within the force. Indeed, every email received from NYP includes the message “Committed to the Code of Ethics“.

But, setting apart the lengthy, routine and serious breaches of statute, guidance and regulations, NYP have, on the face of the extensive evidence I have collected, no interest whatsoever in complying with either the Ethics Code, or Nolan Priciples, or Standards of Professional Behaviour. This is a police force that has had all its own way, without any form of worthwhile scrutiny or oversight, since time immemorial.

Here are just some examples that involve four very senior officers, and their complete disregard for any standards that one might associate with those in public life, let alone a Policing Code of Ethics.

(i) Many more emails than not remain unacknowledged, let alone answered. The two worst offenders in my own experience are Head of NYP’s Professional Standards Department, Superintendent Maria Taylor and Press/Communications Officer, Greig Tindall. Which, by any measure, is extraordinary: The department head charged with upholding high ethical standards of all other officers in the force – and a Communications Officer who doesn’t communicate very well, if at all – both routinely place themselves outside the Code of Ethics.

(ii) There is a strong likelihood that if a response is eventually received from a senior officer, after being prompted, then it may be sent simply with the intention to obfuscate or deceive. That is the documented experience of my direct contact with the aforementioned Jane Palmer and Force Solicitor, Jane Wintermeyer. That may well be how they view their respective roles or, indeed, how they are instructed to respond by their masters, but it doesn’t sit well within an ethical or professional framework.

The two Janes are both, presently, the subject of ongoing misconduct complaints. Apologies have been received from both of them, but that is not the remedy now sought. The issues at stake require much stronger action from the force. But instead of dealing with the core issues and moving on, the drive to cover up misdemeanours of senior officers in North Yorkshire Police is all-pervading and very much extends to Mrs Mulligan’s own PCC office.

David Jones has recently been seconded to the equally shambolic South Yorkshire Police: Ostensibly, to temporarily replace his former Greater Manchester Police colleague, David Crompton, as a pair of ‘clean hands’.

Now, the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire, Dr Alan Billings, must decide whether he has simply replaced one David, albeit on an interim basis, with another David who is a copper out of the same flawed mould.

To many in the picturesque coastal towns of Scarborough and Whitby, and an even larger number across the broader acres of North Yorkshire, the very thought that Jane Margaret Kenyon could be worthy of a special civic honour would be anathema.

Miss Kenyon endured a chequered history during her political career as a councillor in Scarborough; whilst in her seat on North Yorkshire County Council; and in her role as Chair of North Yorkshire Police Authority (NYPA). She was also a failed Parliamentary candidate, having stood for Huddersfield West as a Conservative nominee in 1991.

As Chair of NYPA, she was in post when the force failed to net the country’s most notorious sex abuser, Jimmy Savile and it is inconceivable that she was one of the very few people in the area who were not aware, however obliquely, of the serial sex offending of Council colleague, and former Mayor of Scarborough, Peter Jaconelli. Indeed, it has been recently revealed that Jaconelli was actually charged with sexually abusing a Spanish waiter during his mayoral year. The case was later mysteriously dropped.

Miss Kenyon was also in the NYPA hot seat during the Grahame Maxwell and Adam Briggs scandals that brought national media attention of the worst kind to North Yorkshire Police.

It was also Jane Kenyon who abused her role as Chair in attempting to have journalist Tim Hicks arrested, on entirely spurious claims of criminal harassment, which resulted in a lengthy post-interview state of hiatus but no arrest, no disclosure of any offence committed, or any further action by the police except a senior detective telling Hicks his articles were ‘damaging the reputation of North Yorkshire Police‘.

It was a spiteful, vindictive act by Miss Kenyon (whom police officers referred to throughout the Hicks interview as ‘Jane’) designed only to intimidate a reporter trying to do his job exposing misconduct in public authorities. What has now belatedly emerged is that Miss Kenyon lied in her witness statement as part of those police enquiries (read more here)

Calls for Miss Kenyon to resign as Chair of the Police Authority stretch as far back as 2005 when, unsurprisingly in the light of what was to follow, financial irregularities were uncovered by auditors in the accounts management of the police. A full York Evening Press report can be read here. It is a a damning indictment of her stewardship at NYPA.

There was a further, widely reported call for Kenyon to resign in 2007: This time the scandal centred on the waste of hundreds of thousands of pounds for 27 luxury cars, for which the senior police officers using them had not received appropriate training. (Scarborough News coverage here ). Another sorry tale of financial mismanagement.

There was, in between times, the Chief Constable Della Cannings profligacy scandal, particularly when the cost of a shower next to her office cost £28,000. Phil Willis, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough at the time, accused her of turning the local police into “a laughing stock”, while the Yorkshire Post revealed further details of Cannings’ extravagant and self-glorifying behaviour, including a HQ sculpture garden and a building to be named in her honour. Not to mention her cock-a-doodle-do telephone ringtone, and the poor-taste joke about her ‘vibrator’. All this, again, on Kenyon’s watch at the Police Authority. The fact that Ms Canningswas a regular vistor to Miss Kenyon’s home between Scarborough and Whitby would, of course, be entirely unconnected. They are both pictured below.

It is also in my own certain knowledge, following a lengthy interchange with Dr Judith Heeley, who was then Treasurer for both West Yorkshire Police Authority (WYPA) and the NYPA, prior to her retirement, that certain cross-Authority ‘deals’ and staffing arrangements were not at all to the advantage of NYPA, yet had been signed off by Kenyon.

Interestingly, shortly after election as Police & Crime Commissioner, Julia Mulligan ended some, if not all, of those financial arrangements.

As a County and Borough councillor, Kenyon has featured in the national press over a number of scandals, which include the infamous ‘double-dipping’ farrago where elected North Yorkshire representatives were shamelessly drawing allowances for exactly the same item from two different public purses. Her association as Chief Financial Officer with Belvedere Computers Inc in the United States, where a trail of debt and unpaid employees was left in its wake along with the whiff of a ‘long firm fraud’, and the similarly ill-starred Dales Timber Ltd which left creditors nursing £250,000 of debt headaches, do not chime well with Kenyon’s role in charge of oversight of a police force, or her legal and financial portfolio responsibilities as a councillor. Neither do failure to register interests appropriately, as a public official, as required under the Localism Act 2011.

Brought up in Huddersfield, and a graduate of the exclusive, fee-paying Wakefield Girls High School, the charismatic Kenyon holds a special interest to the author of this piece. Not least because her father, Sir Bernard Kenyon, was Clerk of the former West Riding County Council based in Wakefield. He was a formidable figure in the area, but fell from grace through his improper association with the famously corrupt architect, John Poulson. The modernistic palace named ‘Manasseh’ that Poulson built on the edge of his home village, Carleton on the outskirts of Pontefract, was actually directly opposite my first ever home, ‘West Haugh’, after fleeing my parents’ nest.

Jane Kenyon and I actually met at a charity function in the Royal Hotel during my time as managing director of the now defunct Scarborough Evening News. She was charm and grace personified.

Her marriage in January 2014, after a long term adulterous relationship, to another Scarborough councillor noted for financial chicanery, Thomas William Miller, does leave the independent observer with the view that scandal is never far from Jane Kenyon’s door. Or, as she is sometimes now known: Jane Kenyon-Miller. The corporate and financial dealings of Bill Miller (as he is more commonly known), over a very long period, don’t bear too much scrutiny – but it serves no useful purpose to rehearse them here. It is not ‘Nine Dollar Bill’ that is being lined up for an ill-deserved civic honour.

Which brings the reader, neatly, to the thrust of this piece: Jane Kenyon was given the considerable honour of becoming a Honorary Alderman of the Borough of Scarborough at a specially convened meeting on 23rd October, 2015, despite some vigorous objections raised by me, and others more local to the Borough. In the course of my interchange with the Council’s press officer, Gabrielle Jandzio, on this subject, it has become clear that I was deliberately misled by none other than the Council’s Legal Services Manager, Lisa Dixon, and her subordinate, David Kitson, who set out to falsely misrepresent the contents of correspondence concerning a previous complaint made against Mrs Dixon to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

This is the same Lisa Dixon who tried to prevent local journalists Nigel Ward, and the aforementioned Tim Hicks, uncovering a series of embarrassing stories about her and Scarborough Council by threatening to have their website closed down. The website is still functioning normally, today, when I checked. Indeed, this is one of the more interesting pieces I found concerning Jane Kenyon (click here).

The Real Whitby material on Scarborough Council’s frequent misdemeanours is also, as far as I can see, replicated on the more recent North Yorks Enquirer website. There has been no challenge by Mrs Dixon to the content of that website, thus far.

The SRA are now aware that a complaint will be lodged over this issue once my enquiries into the matter are complete and, it has emerged, that there is already a previous complaint against Mrs Dixon on file. Although this was misrecorded by the SRA, as a complaint against Scarborough Borough Council, rather than Mrs Dixon. A matter, presently, the subject of an appeal by the complainant.

Several freedom of information requests were made to the Council concerning the process leading to the nomination of Jane Kenyon for Alderman status. Unsurprisingly, the Council failed to respond within the statutory twenty working day period with the information and it soon become clear that significant tranches of material had been deliberately withheld by Mr Kitson, who signed off the disposal letter. A review of that decision requested in September has failed to draw any response whatsoever and the matter is now with the Information Commissioner’s office for determination. Both regulatory and civil action is contemplated over Kitson’s conduct of these matters: His disposition in flagrantly circumventing the law of the land does not sit well with his status as a solicitor, and more crucially, an Officer of the Court

Having recently faced the ignominy of obliterating Peter Jaconelli (who would have been prosecuted for multiple child sex offences were he still alive) from the honours boards in the Town Hall at Scarborough, it is difficult to gauge the rationale for the Council bringing down another firestorm of criticism upon itself.

However, in a sensational twist to the Kenyon tale, another seriously damaging allegation has had further light shed upon it. New and probative evidence has been passed to me, anonymously, concerning an alleged fraudulent benefit fraud claim made by Bill Miller. This was the subject of an article in Private Eye magazine in May 2014 and followed an attempt by Scarborough Council to smear Nigel Ward. This backfired spectacularly when Ward was able to hand the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) investigator a copy of the able-bodied Miller’s 1996 ‘disability claim’ which had been leaked to him from the Town Hall. Now, there is an audio recording in which a leading Borough and County Councillor, David Jeffels, is heard, very clearly, to discuss a fraudulent claim by a local Councillor which, allegedly, was settled at a tribunal by payment of a sum, thought to be £25,000, by the alleged benefits cheat. Incredibly, if all this is true, and can be linked to the Private Eye story on Miller (and by default Kenyon) it would leave Council lawyer Mrs Dixon scratching her head: She is already supposed to have investigated this matter – and presumably filed it in the ‘nothing to see here’ box. It also puts the Council in another tight spot and, potentially, facing the eradication of another name from the Alderman honours board.

I have also very recently seen documents that confirm that Bill Miller is, in fact, under investigation by the DWP and there is a hearing scheduled for early Summer 2016.

In this regard, it is worth noting that her local electorate in the Mayfield ward turfed Kenyon off the Council at the last election, in May 2015. Not inconceivably, as a result of all the negative publicity she had visited upon the town over her scandalous conduct. It is reported that she left the election count in tears, after the result was announced. She is also reportedly furious with the Real Whitby and North Yorkshire Enquirer journalists for exposing scandal after scandal about her, as if they had no right whatsoever to do so

Following the blanking out of Jaconelli’s name there were 26 Honorary Aldermen remaining on the board in the Town Hall at Scarborough. It now seems certain, as more and more allegations surface about Jane Kenyon, that sometime in the coming months there will be another blank space after the rubbing out of another disgraced civic figure.

Another interesting, and high profile, past nomination was that of Cllr Eileen Bosomworth (whom I have also met). She was the Leader of the Council during the nationally notorious £56 million High Point Rendel scandal, but despite the strong stench of corruption and lawlessness around the whole affair, and only serving fourteen years rather than the requisite sixteen, less than two years later Mrs Bosomworth was conferred with the honour of Alderman.

Just as strange as the 2013 decision by North Yorkshire County Council to make Jane Kenyon an Alderman of the County. But, of course, at that time knowledge of her misdemeanours was not no widespread – and the efforts to silence her critics not quite so frantic. Or, as well funded via the public purse.

Mrs Kenyon-Miller was not available for comment prior to publication of this article. I am presently trying to track down Bill Miller: last seen emerging from his Mercedes motor car (Reg no TWM 1) parked on double yellow lines outside Scarborough Town Hall. He appeared remarkably sprightly for a man reputedly disabled for the past twenty years.